


Spoken Weaponry

by afteriwake



Series: Where Speech Ends [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 22:06:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4196694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock realizes he owes Molly an apology for his behavior the morning John dragged him to her lab for the drug testing. His attempt to apologize, though, ends up going awry when he realizes he also needs to tell her about Janine before she hears about it from someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spoken Weaponry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [horrorfangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/horrorfangirl/gifts).



> So this is definitely set during the series 3 finale, at the beginning of the episode. The song that is included in this story is "Enjoy The Silence (M. Shinoda Remix)" by Depeche Mode, which is honestly one of my favorite remixes ever and I highly recommend it for being almost as brilliant as the original version. The question used to inspire this story came from the article "[10 Unexpectedly Fun Questions To Ask On A First Date](http://www.hellogiggles.com/questions-to-ask-on-a-first-date/)" by Lisa Lo Paro.

**What's something you're bad at?**

Well. He hadn't expected it to go quite like _that_.

He'd been back for a time, long enough for John to get engaged and get married. Long enough for Molly to go from engaged to unengaged. Long enough to realize his friends lives had all moved on despite his disappearance and return. Or maybe it was in spite of him at this point, he wasn't quite sure. All he knew is he was having to share the few people he cared about with others. Mary he didn't mind too much, but Tom? Tom he had despised. So it was good riddance that he was gone.

Of course, he could have been more tactful bringing it up. He was fairly sure it wasn't news to either Mary or John that Molly was suddenly single; neither of them had appeared particularly shocked, at least until Molly had slapped him the first time, and he was fairly sure that was only because she had raised her hand and hit him not once, not twice, but three times. He never would have expected it, to be honest, but to hide his shock that Molly wasn't as mousy as she had been, that the backbone she'd shown all those years ago at the party was still there and perhaps stronger than ever, he'd made the quip about the ring. And in a brief instant, before anger took over again, he saw hurt in her eyes. He'd hurt her. Again. Wasn't that typical of him?

Molly...Molly was special, in a way that John wasn't. What he took from John before The Fall was constant companionship, constant affirmation that he really was a bloody genius, constant confirmation that he actually mattered. The fame brought about by John sharing the blog posts he could have done without, but the way it drew him and John together was irreplaceable. After all, where would he be without his faithful blogger? But Molly gave him something else: absolute and unconditional acceptance. Even when he was an arsehole of the highest degree she still cared about him. She still accepted him as a person she didn't mind spending time with, a genius who really was the best, a very solitary and lonely man. She accepted him and yet she tried to change him in subtle ways by being a kind presence no matter how awfully he acted. Rarely did she get angry. And she'd been willing to potentially upend her entire life to help him perpetrate the biggest sham he'd ever had to pull off. She didn't deserve to be hurt, least of all by him. And yet he had hurt her once again. Apparently he was still a prat.

And so he decided, after John deposited him at Baker Street and was confronted with the “reality” that he was enjoying the fruits of intimate relations with Janine, after the encounter with Magnussen where the man played right into his grubby hands by dismissing him as meaningless, to go and make his amends with Molly. She deserved that much, at least. Considering she'd been at the hospital working and it was only a few hours later she should still be there; it wasn't nearly time for a break so she should be in the morgue. He made his way down there but the closer he got to the double doors the more he realized it wasn't dead silent as it usually was. There was noise. No, there was music. Angry music that sounded vaguely familiar, as though he had heard it once upon a time, but not this exact version. When he got inside the morgue he paused and took in the song.

_All I ever wanted, all I ever needed_  
_Is here in my arms_  
_Words are very unnecessary_  
_They can only do harm_

_Interesting choice,_ he thought to himself as he headed towards the door to her office. The song seemed to have struck a musical interlude, and so he knocked on the office door. The song volume lowered, and he could hear the chair roll away from the desk and the six steps it took to cross from her desk to the door. She opened it up and glared at him, and he held up the bag in front of him. “I've come to apologize,” he said.

She was a bit shorter than him, and he watched as she looked up and gave the bag a speculative look. Finally she took it from him, pulling it down and closer and opening it. “Croissants,” she said. “And they're still warm.”

“They are still your favorite, correct?” he asked. “The chocolate filled ones?”

“You can't buy your way into my good graces, Sherlock,” she said, the glare coming back, though it was more mild this time. “You were an unbelievably insensitive arse this morning. I mean, John and Mary already knew, but the other bloke who got dragged in here didn't.”

“Well, the lack of ring would have made the change in the state of your relationship obvious to anyone paying attention,” he remarked, and then he saw the glare had returned in full force when she turned around. He cursed at himself slightly. “What I meant was, if you didn't want the world to know you could have continued to wear the ring.”

“It's hard to wear an engagement ring when it isn't in your possession,” she said in a clipped tone. “It belonged to his Nan and it was only fair he get it back. After all, ending the engagement was all my idea. I owed him. He owed me nothing.”

“Molly...” he said, but she slammed down the bag on the desk and then leaned over, planting a hand on either side of the bag. She was still quite livid, he realized, and he hadn't gone about making this apology any easier to take at all.

“He was jealous. He was _so_ jealous of you. Of the fact that I care about you, that you're a friend and I hold you in high regard. He said once you fancy someone you can't stop, and I said you can. We were only friends, you and I, in the end, and he was just _so sure_ that wouldn't always be the case. Can you believe it? He actually thought there was a chance you might fancy me. But you don't fancy anyone.”

“What do you mean, _were_ friends?” he said, his eyes wide. That part. The rest of what she said didn't matter because he was still stuck on that part, the fact she had used past tense to describe their friendship. Past tense meaning she didn't see there being a future to their friendship. He hadn't meant for it to get this bad, he really hadn't. “Molly, you can't just throw what's between us away. I have so few friends, so few people I trust implicitly. I can't lose you.”

She turned to him and blinked slightly, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “What?” she asked quietly.

Now it was his turn to be slightly confused. “You said we were friends. Past tense. In the end, you and I _were_ friends. Are we not friends now?”

“No. I mean...yes. I...” She shut her eyes and shook her head. “We're still friends, I suppose, even if I'm still quite put out with you.”

He felt a knot in his stomach he hadn't even realized was there unclench. Good. She was still in his life. This was good. Absolutely good. He felt his shoulders sag slightly with relief. “Wonderful.”

“Look, Sherlock, it's not as though I want to suddenly spend a lot of time with you. I mean, it's partially your fault it happened, even if it isn't actually _your_ fault,” she said. “It was more mine, I suppose. I mean, who in their right mind would expect you to actually take enough notice of someone to end up fancying them?” She gave him a small smile. “You aren't that type of person.”

He ran a hand through his hair. If his grand plan worked, if he went and followed it all the way through, then her thoughts on the matter would be disproved even if she was actually right. And he realized he needed to tell her. She needed to hear it from him because obviously she hadn't already heard it from John or Mary, if Mary knew by now. It wouldn't be right if someone else told her or she read it in the newspapers. “I'm asking Janine to marry me tonight,” he said quietly, looking down for a moment.

When she squeaked in surprise he looked up again and saw she was staring at him with wide eyes, the O shape of her mouth bigger this time than the last. “Janine? Mary's friend Janine? Maid of honour at the wedding? Dancing with the eligible men and probably slinking off for a secluded shag Janine? _That_ Janine?” she asked, and he could see her grip the edge of the desk tightly. And her shoulders were shaking, which surprised him. Was it because of disbelief? Was it anger? Or was it something...else? 

“She is actually a decent person,” he said. He might be perpetrating a huge sham in this situation, but the least he could do is defend Janine's honor.

“I don't...” she said quietly to herself, shutting her eyes and then turning away and hanging her head. She was quiet for a few seconds, as though she was counting in her head, trying to calm herself. It appeared to be somewhat successful the longer it went on. “It's serious enough for marriage?” she asked when she finally spoke.

“I suppose. I think she'd be amenable to the idea.”

She nodded slowly. “Best of luck to you, then,” she said, her voice devoid of nearly all emotion, aside from an undercurrent of hurt.

“Molly...” he said, taking a step closer. Damn it, he'd hurt her again, and that had been the opposite of his intentions. She shook her head and held up a hand and he stopped. Then he realized why she wanted him to stop. No matter what he said, the words would hurt. The words in the song rang in his head: words could easily do harm. And he'd used them as his weapon of choice not once but twice. He looked at her for a long moment. He was going to propose to a woman in order to glean her boss's secrets and he wasn't thinking twice about it, about how it would hurt her to find out the truth, but doing this to Molly made him feel truly rotten. “I'm sorry.”

“All right,” she said quietly. “I'll talk to you later, I suppose.”

“Later, then,” he said, giving her one last glance before turning and leaving. After a moment he heard the music volume go back up, but he could hear faintly in the background the sound of soft crying. Even if it all fell apart, if this plan fell through, he was quite worried this was one mistake he wouldn't be able to fix, one hurt he'd inflicted that went too deep to heal, and that was something that saddened him, surprisingly. But after a moment he shook the thought out of his head. He had a ring to buy and a plan to put forward, and he would have to let the rest sort itself out later.


End file.
